


Tunnel Vision

by Sherbet_Sundae



Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Possession, Post-Hellbent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 14:23:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16327667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherbet_Sundae/pseuds/Sherbet_Sundae
Summary: Lewis has some regrets. Some big ones.





	Tunnel Vision

**Author's Note:**

> Had a mighty need to write a little something after the new video. Reposted from my tumblr. It's based on a couple of prompts, which can also be found on my tumblr. (https://sherbetsundae.tumblr.com)

Lewis reached for his heart but stopped short. Something instinctive told him not to touch it. It felt fragile, wrong. It all felt wrong.

How was killing Arthur supposed to feel? They had been friends. Time spent together after work, babysitting, investigating the paranormal in-between. Time spent together on the road, under the stars or in motel rooms. Every motel room had the same industrial, threadbare carpet. Lewis remembered sitting on it countless times in the early hours of the morning, watching infomercials with the volume down low. Vivi could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. Arthur couldn’t. Lewis didn’t mind keeping him company. What were friends for?

Except they weren’t friends, were they? Friends didn’t murder you, didn’t shove you screaming off a cliff.

Arthur hadn’t screamed. He hadn’t made a sound, not after saying Lewis’ name.

‘Lewis?’ He could still hear it, like the words were still echoing off the walls of the illusory cave. He hadn’t sounded scared, just confused. That confusion had reached his eyes as he fell, as he looked back at Lewis looking down at him, and it had felt… wrong.

Arthur’s anger, that pounding need for revenge— it had been a focal point for him, a touchstone. He didn’t know how long he had been dead, but he knew the rage at the center of a swirling vortex of disparate emotions. It was all-consuming and constant and had colored everything.

Everything felt colorless now. Everything felt still.

Lewis stepped off the cliff-face and into the open air. He descended. Arthur was very still. Lewis’ fantasies had never gotten this far. He’d pictured Arthur many ways; broken, bleeding, begging. The aftermath wasn’t something he had planned for.

Arthur’s eyes were still open and staring, not at Lewis but at some unfixed point above. He covered them with his hand. He wasn’t sure you could just close someone’s eyes like they did in the movies. He thought he remembered Vivi complaining about something like that once while the three of them sat together on her couch watching a horror movie. Lewis sat in the middle. Arthur looked away during the death scenes.

A physical sensation brought Lewis back to the present, something warm against his cold right hand. Was Arthur breathing?

Lewis touched the stalagmite. It vanished into purple mist. He caught Arthur in his arms. His body was limp, but the spot where the stone should have pierced his chest was whole.

He was fine. “You’re fine,” said Lewis, like maybe Arthur was unaware. The words came out angry. And he was. Not vengeful, just angry. Angry that he didn’t want revenge anymore, that it had scared him when he thought Arthur was dead, that he was scared.

Lewis shifted Arthur’s weight in his arms, jostling him. There was an orange afterimage, a luminous trail that followed the movement. Lewis waved a hand through it, frustrated. It dissipated, mingling with ambient purple mist, settling like dust on the stony cavern floor.

“Arthur.” He was doing this on purpose, Lewis told himself. He didn’t want to face him. Arthur had always been a coward. He’d lost count of the times he had cowered behind him on investigations, vest fabric balled in his fists.

Except Lewis hadn’t minded it then. He wouldn’t mind it now. But he knew that Arthur wasn’t scared. He hadn’t been scared. He had been… confused. The fight had gone out of him. It didn’t make sense.

There was blood. Lewis hadn’t noticed that before. He took the torn edges of shirt between his fingers. Blood, a hole in his shirt, but no wound.

A dead beat hummed plaintively at Lewis’ feet. He nudged it back with his heel. “Arthur,” said Lewis again, and again the scope of the scene broadened. He noticed Arthur’s left arm… or lack there of. He nearly dropped him and had to scramble not to.

This was not going as planned. Standing at the base of a cliff, a despondent and one-armed Arthur carefully cradled against his chest? No, this had not been in his plans. At least, it wouldn’t have been if he had bothered to make any.

Was that on him? The missing arm? Was that something that happened on impact? It probably wasn’t something that happened bloodlessly. There was none of that, no blood on Arthur’s empty shirt sleeve so…

Lewis scanned the cavern floor. Was that movement? …No. Just mist. Mist and…

Carefully, he laid Lewis down. The arm was a few steps away. The heft of it was strange. Metal, Lewis realized. It was made out of metal. When had this happened? Why had it happened?

A sound drew Lewis’ attention back toward Arthur. Again, movement caught his attention. It was the dead beat, he decided, stooped and frowning over Arthur’s body.

Lewis turned back to the arm. It was intact, a little scuffed but undamaged by the fall. Had it even come off during the fall? He didn’t know. There  were many things he didn’t know.

Something else caught Lewis’ attention. It wasn’t sound or movement, but a hint of color on a small and otherwise unassuming stone. He picked it up.

And then… Arthur stood. Lewis stared at him and Arthur stared back, a third eye unblinking on his left palm. Arthur smiled at him.

No, not Arthur.

Something green and other and horribly, horribly familiar.

Lewis looked down at the rock in his hand. It was fractured and heart-shaped, a vivid violet fading quickly into the gray. “Arthur?” The heart beat twice more and then was still.


End file.
